Traditional Media, Social Media and Chatbots All Act as Gatekeepers, But Chatbots are Most User-Driven

As a graduate student in a journalism program I assisted on a study of journalism education. It was pre-internet, so that did not emerge as one of the conclusions. We did not anticipate social media, nor did we imagine chatbots also would emerge. 

But the idea that news media shape the agenda of what people think about is one of the most established concepts in communication research, and so it makes sense that chatbots might emerge in that role as well. 

The central argument is that the media do not necessarily tell people what opinion to hold, but they have considerable influence over which issues people regard as important, which issues receive attention, and which subjects dominate public discussion. Social media has emerged in that role as well.  

AI chatbots may extend it further by synthesizing information and presenting a seemingly-comprehensive explanation of the issues. In other words, it is possible that chatbots shift the terrain from telling people what is happening to influencing what people think is happening and why it matters.

As with seemingly all media these days, the agenda-setting shifts from “what is happening” to something more akin to “what it means,” on an increasingly-personalized basis. 

To be sure, chatbots do not yet have the reach of social or traditional media. A 2025 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 75 percent of respondents say they “never” get news from chatbots. In 2026, Pew finds few Americans asking chatbots for election information. 

  

source: Pew Research

Still, the shift of agenda setting is clear enough:

• Traditional media agenda set by editors and journalists

• Social media agenda set by algorithms

• AI chatbots (an extension of search) set the agenda. 

Traditional news media, social media, and AI chatbots all exercise agenda-setting power: they influence which issues receive attention, which aspects of those issues stand out, and which issues people associate with one another. 

The main difference is how they exercise that power: news organizations select and emphasize stories; social platforms distribute attention through networks and ranking systems; chatbots synthesize information into answers shaped partly by the user’s questions. Of the three platforms, chatbots are the most user-driven. 

Dimension	Traditional news media	Social media	AI chatbots
Main mechanism	Editorial selection, prominence, and repetition	Network circulation, recommendations, and algorithmic ranking	Retrieval, selection, synthesis, and ordering within an answer
Principal gatekeepers	Reporters, editors, owners, and institutional routines	Platform designers, ranking systems, creators, and users	Model developers, training and retrieval systems, behavioral rules, and user prompts
What receives prominence	Stories judged newsworthy	Content made visible through platform and network processes	Topics, explanations, and sources selected for the response
Audience’s role	Choose outlets and respond to coverage	Publish, follow, share, comment, and influence circulation	Ask questions, specify priorities, and revise answers through follow-up prompts
Typical agenda structure	A relatively shared editorial agenda within an outlet	Multiple overlapping, personalized streams	A potentially individualized agenda constructed in conversation

When using traditional news, the audience generally chooses among editorial products: an outlet, program, section, or story. But it is a top-down process, in any case. 

With social media, users help shape their information environment through follows, searches, posts, and interactions, but still encounter streams of material selected and ranked by others. 

With a chatbot, the user can commission a response whose subject and organization need not correspond to any existing article or feed. It is the most bottom-up form of agenda setting. 

AI Infra Capex is a "Rock and a Hard Place" Situation

Investors have been jittery about possible artificial intelligence circular investment; overinvestment; high capital investment and the sustainability of end user demand for many months, and late October seemed to crystalize some of those fears as key hyperscalers reported quarterly earnings. 

Looking at September 30 through October 30, 2026, one can see the double-digit declines. For about the week ending October 30 technology stocks lost about $1 trillion in valuation.  

Company	Ticker	October stock-price change	Reported Oct. 30 market value ($ billion)	Estimated start-of-month market value ($ billion)	Estimated market value lost ($ billion)
Alphabet	GOOGL	−18.67%	$3,440	$4,230	$790
Nvidia	NVDA	−10.39%	$4,930	$5,502	$572
Meta Platforms	META	−15.19%	$1,570	$1,851	$281
TSMC	TSM	−10.97%	$2,110	$2,370	$260
Micron Technology	MU	−16.92%	$999	$1,203	$204
Broadcom	AVGO	−7.15%	$1,560	$1,680	$120
Amazon	AMZN	−3.53%	$2,600	$2,695	$95

Losses were worse for many suppliers on the chip fabrication, memory or neocloud parts of the value chain. Investors increasingly questioned the return on AI spending. That increases pressure on hyperscalers to reverse course or moderate, but at the risk of abandoning the effort to emerge as a leader of the business. 

Company	Ticker	Reported October stock-price decline
Intel	INTC	−45.20%
CoreWeave	CRWV	−38.05%
SanDisk	SNDK	−35.58%
Nebius Group	NBIS	−33.65%
Lam Research	LRCX	−29.69%
Arm	ARM	−29.54%
Credo Technology	CRDO	−28.16%
Astera Labs	ALAB	−27.42%
Marvell Technology	MRVL	−26.74%
Applied Materials	AMAT	−26.30%

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy calls AI a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I think what we're seeing with AI, it's the biggest transformation in our lifetime.” 

"Would it be more convenient if this type of acceleration and opportunity happened over 25 years and you could spread the CapEx over 25 years," Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO  asked an analyst during the (quarterly earnings) call. "Yeah, it might be more convenient, but that's not the world that we live in, and that's not the opportunity."

That does not help firms keep their profit margins, debt or cash flow where they just recently were, in the short term. But none of the would-be leaders believe they can significantly limit their capital investments at this point without forgoing the opportunity to lead the future market. 

So multiple compression seems likely, as AI infra capex seems to offer a “rock and a hard place” choice.

Are Americans 50% to 70% Less Social Than They Used to Be?

Social isolation seems to be a growing problem, a study by DDB Needham suggests. Between 1975 and 1998, the share of Americans who gave or attended a monthly dinner party declined by half, says DDB Needham as part of its Life Style survey. 

Covid appears to have caused some changes in U.S. social behavior. But many of those changes predate the Covid pandemic.

“The share of Americans who say they host friends or family at their home at least monthly has fallen from 42 percent in 1975 to 12 percent in 2026, a 70 percent collapse in a half-century,” according to Derek Thompson, a Substack contributor. 

Another study suggests that, since 2003 (and up to 2024), the time Americans spend with friends has declined more than 50 percent.

source: American Sociological Association

“Americans have not replaced one form of interaction with another; they have reduced social interaction across the board,” the study authors say. “These findings point to a temporal reorganization of social life marked by the disappearance of the ‘night out.’” 

The U.S. Surgeon General calls this a crisis of loneliness. 

As to “why” this is happening, Bureau of Labor Statistics might well suggest that competition from television, digital entertainment and online communication are drivers of the change, at least in substantial part. 

Simply, staying home has become a more attractive alternative to going out because of streaming, gaming, social media, and online communication. 

And if you have tried to clear calendars for any social event, you know how busy people are, and how many other activities make synchronized face-to-face activities more difficult than once appeared to be the case. 

And some might also note that, as is the case with social media in general, the level of “comparison” in any part of human experience seems to have heightened fears of inadequacy. 

source: Derek Thompson 

In fact, there likely are multiple forces at work that make “staying home” a reasonable choice, compared to going out or entertaining others at home. 

Explanation	Evidence researchers would look for
Digital substitution	Whether increased individual screen time coincides with reduced face-to-face interaction, and whether the two changes are causally related
Work and time pressure	Whether people with irregular schedules, long commutes, or intensive caregiving responsibilities socialize less
Financial pressures	Whether entertaining declines more among households facing higher housing, food, or transportation costs
Geographic separation	Whether distance between friends and relatives predicts fewer visits and gatherings
Institutional decline	Whether loss of church, club, or civic participation predicts weaker friendship networks
COVID-19 habit changes	Whether people whose activities were interrupted returned less often than otherwise similar people whose routines remained intact
Changing preferences	Whether attitudes toward privacy, leisure, and social obligations changed before or after social activity declined

So we might be witnessing an accumulation of several different trends: more attractive solitary entertainment, fragmented schedules, harder-to-coordinate friendships, more demanding expectations for hosting and fewer institutions that routinely bring people together.

source: Data for Progress 

On the other hand, correlation is not necessarily causation. People choosing solitude is one thing;  becoming isolated quite another. 

For lots of reasons, people might genuinely prefer more time alone, as a respite from the rigors of dealing with daily life. 

In other cases social activity might be preferred, but is more difficult to arrange, especially as friends and relatives move about, geographically. 

source: Epoch Times

Either way, many would find the changes unhealthy or unhelpful.